Space Empires is a game in the finest tradition of 4X space games - eXplore, eXploit, eXpand and eXterminate. Players builds up a space empire and uses it to conquer the other players. Exploration on the mounted map is easy for players (and dangerous for their ships), revealing different space terrain that affects movement and combat.

Space Empires was created to keep a rich theme without overcomplicated rules. The game comes with carriers and fighters, mines, cloaking, a very large technology tree, fifteen ship classes, merchant shipping, colonization, mining, terraforming, bases, shipyards, black holes, warp points, and non-player aliens. Yet the rules are simple and intuitive: The basic rules are only 8 pages long and increase to 11 pages in length when the advanced rules are included.